~techmeme | Bookmarks (1014)

Carl Franzen / VentureBeat: Runway debuts Gen-3 Alpha Turbo, a faster and cheaper model than Gen-3 Alpha, capable of generating 5- or 10-second-long video clips, available for all plans  —  After showing it off in preview late last month, Runway has officially released Gen-3 Alpha Turbo, the latest version …

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: X says it's closing its operations in Brazil, claiming a judge threatened arrest if X didn't comply with “censorship orders”; the service remains available  —  X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, said today that it's ending operations in Brazil …

Representative Nancy Pelosi: Nancy Pelosi issues a statement in opposition to California's AI safety bill, saying it's “well-intentioned but ill-informed” and “more harmful than helpful”  —  San Francisco - Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi issued this statement in opposition to California Senate Bill 1047:

Jackson Ryan / New York Times: A profile of Anthony Tan, the solo developer of Way to the Woods, a game that received Epic Games funding and remains unreleased nine years after its conception  —  Anthony Tan was 16 when his idea for a video game about a deer caught the industry's eye.  Nine years later, he's still working on it.

Lynn Doan / Bloomberg: Ericsson to sell its network portability and data exchange services unit Iconectiv to Koch Equity Development for $1B; the deal is expected to close in H1 2025  —  - Ericsson has been working to cut costs amid challenging market  — Koch Industries has long been a huge investor in tech firms

Justin Bachman / Legal Dive: A YouTuber files a proposed class action against Nvidia, accusing it of scraping his content without consent to train AI models, weeks after also suing OpenAI  —  A video creator alleges that the companies scraped his videos, and millions of others, without permission to help train their generative AI learning models.

PYMNTS.com: Amount, which provides digital lending services for credit unions and banks, raised $30M from Curql, Goldman Sachs, WestCap, Hanaco Ventures, QED, and others  —  Banking technology firm Amount has raised $30 million to expand into the credit union sector.  —  Amount announced …

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica: Filing: AT&T and Verizon ask the FCC to deny SpaceX's request to waive rules, claiming Starlink's service with T-Mobile would interfere with existing networks  —  Carriers allege Starlink/T-Mobile will interfere with existing mobile networks.  —  AT&T and Verizon are urging telecom regulators …

Victoria Song / The Verge: Google says it “missed the mark” after leaked screenshots showed a Team Pixel program agreement threatened influencers who didn't showcase the Pixel over rivals  —  The tech review world has been full of murky deals between companies and influencers for years, but it appears Google finally crossed a line with the Pixel 9.

Cristiano Lima-Strong / Washington Post: A US appeals court largely upholds a ruling blocking the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, finding parts of the law likely violate the First Amendment  —  The court found key parts of the landmark law probably violate the First Amendment, largely siding with an industry challenge.

Bloomberg: A US judge temporarily blocks the launch of Venu Sports, the streaming service from Fox/WBD/Disney, a week before rollout, after Fubo filed an antitrust lawsuit  —  US District Judge Margaret Garnett on Friday issued a preliminary injunction blocking the $42.99-a-month service, Venu Sports …

Cade Metz / New York Times: OpenAI removed a cluster of Iranian accounts using ChatGPT for an influence campaign targeting the US elections, and says the effort didn't gain much traction  —  The company said the Iranian effort, which used ChatGPT, did not gain much traction.  —  OpenAI said on Friday that it had discovered …

Ionut Ilascu / BleepingComputer: Background check service National Public Data confirms a breach after hackers leaked a stolen database with millions of SSNs and other sensitive personal info  —  Background check service National Public Data confirms that hackers breached its systems after threat actors leaked a stolen database …

Dan Primack / Axios: FanDuel founders and other early shareholders sue KKR and Shamrock Capital over the 2018 Paddy Power Betfair merger that wiped out the value of their holdings  —  - The case has gone through several travails, including being dismissed and having that dismissal successfully appealed.

Joann Muller / Axios: Walmart and DroneUp end drone delivery in all 18 Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Tampa hubs to focus on Dallas-Fort Worth; DroneUp cuts 70, or ~17% of its staff  —  - The three cities were part of a splashy rollout in 2022 that was described as the first large-scale drone delivery operation in the U.S.

Kai Nicol-Schwarz / Sifted: Caresyntax, which is building AI-powered surgical data analysis tools, raised a $180M Series C extension consisting of $80M in equity and $100M in debt  —  More than a dozen investors were involved in the equity and debt round for Berlin-based Caresyntax  —  Berlin-based Caresyntax …

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: The European Commission asks Meta for more information about its Content Library tool and API under the DSA, following Meta's decision to deprecate CrowdTangle  —  The Commission is seeking more information from Meta following its decision to deprecate its CrowdTangle transparency tool.

Jay Peters / The Verge: Epic brings its games to AltStore for iOS in the EU and plans to bring them to Aptoide's iOS store in the EU, ONE Store on Android, and “other stores” globally  —  Fortnite is finally back on iOS, just over four years after Apple booted it from the iOS App Store — but it's only available in the EU.

Taylor Lyles / IGN: Epic confirms that the Epic Games Store is available to download on Android devices worldwide, in addition to iOS users based in the EU  —  Worldwide launch on Android, while only EU iPhone users can access it.  —  We already knew Epic Games plans to release its digital storefront …

Suvashree Ghosh / Bloomberg: Chainalysis: the value of crypto hacks increased by ~84% to $1.58B in the first seven months of 2024, likely due in large part to the rise in crypto prices  —  - Number of heists rose slightly, centralized exchanges targeted  — Bitcoin made up 40% of the proceeds of this year's heists

Financial Times: Danish officials say Margrethe Vestager, known for hitting Big Tech with multibillion-euro fines, is not being considered as EU antitrust chief for a third term  —  Danish commissioner renowned for being tough on Big Tech will not be reappointed for a third term

Bloomberg: Japan will apply foreign trade regulations to chipmaking equipment, which will require foreign investors to give prior notice when conducting direct investment  —  Japan has decided to apply foreign trade regulations to chipmaking equipment as part of its efforts to secure stable supply chains, the Ministry of Finance said Friday.

Jody Godoy / Reuters: Court filing: TikTok says DOJ misstated its ties to China, made factual errors in the case, and the divestment law would strip TikTok of its free speech rights  —  TikTok told a federal appeals court on Thursday that the U.S. Department of Justice has misstated the social media app's ties to China …

Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica: Primate Labs releases Geekbench AI 1.0, formerly Geekbench ML, to test CPU, GPU, and NPU performance, available on Android, iOS, and desktop  —  Performance test comes out of beta as NPUs become standard equipment in PCs.  —  Neural processing units (NPUs) are becoming commonplace in chips …